My Big Phat Cambodian Wedding!

“You have to cut them. Cut them shorter. I can’t see. I really can’t see!”

My stylist had a slight mustache that I could faintly make out under the false eyelashes she’d glued to my eyelids. They were so long and curled, opening my eyes was a battle. The glue holding them freaked me out. Given the humidty, I was alarmed how well they stayed put. It brought forth concern that I might never, ever get them off.

The air was like the cough of God. Third Reich oppressive. And to make matters worse, the power had gone out again. Sweat was running in small tributaries down the ripped pleather of the salon chair. My hair was expanding in the moisture, which seemed to please the stylist. In an effort to curb my transformation into Rocky Horror, I had actually grabbed the hairdryer at one point and marched it across the street to Serenity Spa, where a generator was loudly moaning.

Serenity Spa is neither ‘serene’ nor much of a ‘spa.’ Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure their handjobs are top notch. But their foot massages need some work, and at that moment, I hated the owners because I was not allowed to use their generator. Too expensive, they told me. “Tlai Nah!”

Going to a Cambodian wedding is a huge ordeal. I will put less effort into, hair, makeup and dress shopping for my own wedding than I did for this one, and, honestly, that’s ok. This one was something I’m likely to remember as fondly as my own.

Our nursery at the school is run by a lovely girl named Hoe. She invited all of us to come to her reception. Cambodians save for years for their weddings and each guest gives money to help balance out the expense. It was a massive honor to be invited. The bride changes outfits four times during the event, and guests are expected to get equally coiffed, which means buying or renting a sequined dress, enduring fake eyelashes, liquid liner thick enough to see from space and hair. Extravagant. Helmet. Hair.

Ho was beyond excited at the school and kept hugging us all the week prior, explaining over and over how much it meant that we were coming.

The day of the wedding, we took the morning off from work, and I enlisted the help of my best buddy Chaly (Pronounced like Char-lie, sans the ‘r’) to help us find dresses.

Shopping for a sequined dress in Cambodia is not all that easy. The dresses are rented from a typical outdoor, covered, Asian market. The vendor stalls are made from corrugated metal, slowly rotating fans move the stagnant air around as flies swarm plates of pork bone and the cacophony of the day’s bartering mixes into one giant buzzsaw reverberation. Inside, you can buy chicken heads, live eels, gold jewelry, panties, buckets, rice balls, lanterns, hookahs, Hello Kitty paraphenalia, blow torches, fake watches, a puppy and a sequined ball gown – all in one amazing stop.

We needed Chaly. Chaly is Khmer and could help us barter. More importantly, Chaly is 18 and fabulously gay. You’ve never met anyone gayer than Chaly. To give you an idea, the last time he and I went to the bar to play pool, our conversation went like this:

Me: “What’s up with that necklace? Why are you wearing a metal ring?” (I reach over and grab the end of it)

Chaly: (tone completely casual) “Honey, that’s my cock ring dangling. And you are holding it.”

Ahem. Anyways, Chaly is gorgeous and wonderful and despite the fact that it horrifies his father, he wants to move to Paris and become a designer. Chaly knows exactly who Chaly is at the age of 18, and I’m blown away by him. If he can get out of Sihanoukville, he will sit the world on its ass, I’m quite certain.

So, off we went to the market to rent our dresses. I stood in my underwear in front of random Khmer people for two hours, pulling taffeta and chiffon over my head, rearranging the padded bra cups they had to stuff into every option. “You have no breasts,” Chaly kept muttering angrily. “How come you come to Cambodia with no breasts? Big thighs, but no breasts? Fucking Americans. So silly!”

Just when I was annoyed enough to consider tossing in the towel, Chaly screamed that we had found my dress. It was blue. It was covered in sequins. 1985 called frantic, pleading for its prom gown back. Chaly waved his hands around joyously and bounced up and down, disrupting the flies. I paid the $10 rental fee, my deposit waived because he knew the owner of the stall, and we headed back for hair and makeup.

Once we were all dolled up, we took a series of photos outside of our guesthouse, sucking white wine through straws to avoid smearing our lipstick and then hopped in a tuk tuk to the event.

We danced all night. We danced with the cow. We slurped green energy drink and vodka. We guzzled warm Angkor beer poured over ice. We tried to keep our rented dresses out of the dirt and our fake eyelashes in place in the heat. And we succeeded.

Hoe and her new husband danced around a traditional table of fruit and plastic water bottles (we never did figure that part out), we lit sparklers and drank duck soup.

In other words – to sum up this epically long blog post – we had the best time ever. I will never forget my first Cambodian wedding, and if I ever get married, I just might have the ceremony here instead of America. Regardless, I’m definitely having a cow.